Nothern California Homebrewers Festival

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Greetings from the Mad Brewers:

Whew! It wasn’t until I input the list of 57 Northern California Homebrewing Clubs that I realized how many of us there are. This letter is going out to 57 clubs listed on the AHA website. The clubs range from Anderson, near Redding to the North, to Bakersfield/Pismo Beach to the South, to South Lake Tahoe to the East, to Santa Rosa to the West. Everybody is within roughly 300 miles/5 hours of Napa.

The reason for this letter is to let you know that we’ve decided to organize and host a Northern California Homebrewers Festival, something we’ve been talking about for like 4 years now. This will be a Festival by homebrewers, for homebrewers. It will not be "open to the public." Tickets will not be sold over the internet, or through homebrew supply shops. There will be no advertisements. We’re looking at having something akin to "a backyard Bar-B-Que with 400 of your closest friends." In other words, a congregation of homebrewers, drinking homebrew, listening to well-known speakers, eating, and partying to a band or two.

We would like your club to participate. To our knowledge, this has never been attempted in Northern California, although a "Southern California Homebrewers Festival" has been held annually since 1991. Last year’s SCHF drew 1300 brewers, and something like 3000 gallons of beer were served by the 30 clubs that participated. Part of the reason we are inviting clubs as far south as Bakersfield is that the SCHF is pretty much limited to clubs "south of the Grapevine," which seems to be where those folks draw the line. (Although we’ve crashed the party every year since 1994, and now they give us a table, because we always take beer to serve.)

Here’s what we have in mind. The heart of the event is beer. Specifically homebrew. We look for every club to bring its finest. We plan on setting up a table for every club that wants to come. The day gets spent sampling everyone else’s beer. It’s pretty simple. Oh, and there’s food, and speakers, and bands to go with it. The main focus will be homebrew and brewing. We can’t overemphasize that this is going to be fun.

Here’s what we don’t have in mind. A bunch of the "general public" showing up for a beer bash. The folks that don’t have a clue of the difference between ale and lager, let alone the difference between a maibock and a barley wine. The folks that think "whoa, free beer, dude." Another thing that we don’t have in mind is a "formal competition.: We labored over this one, and decided it’s neither the time or place for the "Northern California Homebrew Competition." (Of course, that’s not to say that there won’t be a little comparison going on....) It’s also not a "kids and dogs" event (i.e., it’s an adult event; leave them at home). Oh, and it won’t be a "homebrewers festival" where the homebrew clubs aren’t there (let alone invited), and there isn’t any homebrew, and there aren’t any homebrewers, either. This is not a commercial gig. We’re not pros, we’re homebrewers, and we want a party for US!

We have a location, Skyline Park, in Napa. The park is a 950 acre privately operated "wilderness" park, with plenty of parking, inexpensive and spacious camping sites, RV hookups, showers, etc. It is remote enough to be "off the beaten path," yet close enough that a shuttle bus can take non-campers to town and back within roughly 30 minutes. A block of rooms at the nearby Best Western, with "festival rates," will be available for those not wishing to camp. We are talking to potential speakers for the event, and expect to have either 3 or 4 nationally recognized speakers for the event. We have one band lined up, and are working on additional entertainment. And there will be food, a raffle, commemorative tasting glasses, t-shorts (including some 3XLs), etc.

We want to have an organizational meeting to discuss a few things, and we’d like your club to participate for a few reasons. First, hey, we want to meet some other clubs. Send one or two club reps. Second, since this is a first time thing, we need to get an idea of how many clubs are interested in getting together with each other. When the SCHF started in 1991, they had 75 people show up. Because we can’t foot the bill for the event, we’re going to sell tickets, through the clubs, and they’ll probably be $25. All tickets will be sold pre-sale, with no tickets sold at the door. A couple of the reasons for presale is so that we can let the vendors know how many people to plan for, and so we know how many tables, chairs, port-o-lets, rent-a-cops, etc. to order, as well as buy the insurance, and otherwise take care of the financial end. Maybe we can even promise the bands a few bucks. Third, we need some bodies to help with things like parking, taking tickets at the gate, handing out tasting glasses, putting on wristbands, etc., and we’d like volunteers. Volunteers get comped on the tickets. And we expect that the participating club reps will be comped as well, so long as we can at least cover expenses. And if there’s a forth, it’s an excuse to drink a few homebrews. By then we should have some graphics (possibly a pre-screen) of the Festival logo, so you can get an idea of what the T-shirts and glasses will have on them.

One other thing to discuss is how the event will proceed. We figure campers will show up Friday afternoon, to set up, and we’ll be working on setting up the stage, sound, etc., as well. There will be some kind of Friday night event for the Speakers and Club Reps to attend. Non-campers can show up at their hotel whenever. Saturday, we figure to open gates around 9:30, start the pouring at 1) a.m., and the park says it’s curtains at 10 p.m. We’ll have the speakers, raffle and bands in the interim. Sunday will be cleanup, breakdown and departure. And while we have full empathy for a 5 hour drive with a brutal hangover, we have no sympathy. We drive 8½ hours from Temecula (home of the SCHF). Been there, done that, got a bunch of T-Shirts and glasses to prove it.

The first organizational meeting will be held on Saturday, March 14, at 11:00 a.m. here in Napa. Rain or shine, at the Park. If it’s rainy, we’ll meet indoors at the Social Hall; hopefully it’ll be sunny, and we can sit around outside and you can get a dry look at the Fest site. After you’ve had a chance to talk about whether you’d like to take part, give me a call, or drop me an email, and I’ll drop you a map with directions. And, if you wouldn’t mind, whether or not you want to be involved in what we hope will be an annual event, would you send us an update on your club name (a few on the AHA site aren’t listed) as well as your club rep, and a phone, fax and email. If this comes off like we expect, we’ll be sending you an invitation next year, even if you don’t show up this year.

If your club is interested in participating, but you can’t send a rep to the meeting, let us know. Some of the details can be discussed over the phone. We mainly want to know that you think a head count might be, and whether any of your members would be interested in volunteering.

As far as an event date is concerned, we’re looking at "late Oktoberfest," either the last Saturday in September, or one of the first two in Oktober. Napa is beautiful that time of year. Warm days, cool nights, no rain. Kids are back in school and the grape harvest is on. This is another topic for decision at the meeting, since we’ll need to finalize arrangements with speakers, entertainment, and vendors.

To recap:

Northern California Homebrewers Festival
Homebrew, homebrewers, speakers, food, bands, raffle
Organizational Meeting in March
Festival Sometime late September/early Oktober
Napa

Be there. Aloha

Jeff Brown
Mad Brewers - Napa - Sonoma
President
(707) 258-0648

Dan Sullivan
Mad Brewers - Napa - Sonoma
Membership Chair, Ex-President-for-Life
(707) 258-9369
brewlawz@napanet.net

sully@drunkenbastards.org

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